SAHIWAL, Oct 21: A week-long ‘health mela’ to extend free medical treatment to the rural population was inaugurated on Sunday in Chak 3/14-L.

Talking to newsmen, Punjab Health Services director-general Yaqoob Jaffar said that DHQ Hospital MS Dr Jahanzeb Khan had proposed the idea of organizing the health mela on self-help basis.

He said a team of specialists, medical officers and paramedics would examine patients and provide them with treatment on the spot.

He said patients needed longer medication would be admitted to DHQ/THQ hospitals, adding that free treatment would be provided to them till their recovery.

Dr Jahanzeb said the treatment would be extended in specialities of general surgery, medicine, paediatrics, cardiology, gynaecology, chest, pathology, urology, orthopaedics, ENT, psychiatry, dentistry, radiology and ECG.

To facilitate MOs and specialists, the Health department had provided mobile units of X-ray machine, ECG and laboratory test equipment.

MOs would examine patients at the OPD site camp and, if needed, would refer them to specialists for diagnoses, he said.

He hoped that around 15,000 patients would be checked and extended treatment, including eye operations, for which arrangements had been made in the RHC, Kassowal. Local Nazims and philanthropists, he said, would provide these patients with day-to-day expenditures.

Dr Jahanzeb said doctors running private clinics would give medicines sufficient for the treatment of 15,000 patients.

Representative of WHO Ismatullah Chaudhry, Brig Farooq Maan of NAB, local district & sessions judge Ali Hassan Rizvi and a retired banker of Bahawalnagar, Muhammad Umar Khan, offered the Health DG to organize a similar ‘health mela’ in the Bahawalnagar district.